4pc T4 was great for tanking till I had access to T5, try to get badge/t5 upgrades. T4 isn't the greatest for tanking.

Edit* You aren't armor capped for a raid boss :P

Maybe I'm missing something, but how, given your gear, are you getting to armour capped (35880)?

Druidicbeast, you have 378 Def and 15 Resil, you aren't crit immune. Download Rawr and play around with your gear setup with different items/gems and try to get crit immune. The Druid Wiki � Rawr

Also, armory is showing your T6 helm un-enchanted, putting +18 resil is probably a good idea. Also, using PvP bracers is usually the best option to stay crit immune, armory me if you need to see my tank gear. Also, [Brooch of Deftness] is a good option for tanking since you can stay crit immune from resil enchant to helm and PvP bracers. Try it out on rawr, see what kind of stats you can come up with.

[Thunderheart Wristguards] vs [Guardian's Dragonhide Bracers]
Why are the pvp bracers so well budgeted for pve? The resilience lets you gem/ enchant more sta/ agility and the lower armour isn't a big deal considering the level of armour on other endgame items. I currently use s3 over t6 and it will be pretty depressing to have to do some arenas to get another pve upgrade.
Even [Demontooth Shoulderpads] vs [Brutal Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders] is pretty close and depending on how you reach crit immunity the pvp ones might be better for pve raid tanking.

Personally, I plan on using the badge bracers over t6 for tanking until I either need the bracers to keep the 4 piece bonus or I get armor capped with t6 bracers and without badge of tenacity, so I'd compare the s4 bracers to those instead. But bracers have always been the most desirable pvp gear for us, probably because there are hardly any decent bracers in the game. I think the only bracers I've used since pre-bc that were a drop from a boss are the insidious bands.


And s4 shoulders are damn good, especially once you start trying to figure out how to put together a 4t6/4sunwell dps set and a 4t6/4sunwell tank set without having to wait for double drops of the same item. There's a big armor dropoff, but with the other sunwell pieces that shouldn't really be a big concern except for Brutallus, and by the time you can get demontooth he's old news anyway.


I am glad the pve staff is finally hands down better than the pvp staff though.

So, you can probably armory me if you have to to contextualize.

I've been thinking about tanking Heroic Magisters for a while now, but every time I try to put a group together in guild, I'm told that ferals have a _very_ hard time tanking it, and that I'd probably be better, considering my gear level, to just go as DPS.

My DPS gear _sucks_ becuase I'm one of the MTs for the guild.

Should I really be so worried about this, or will I be fine, assuming 2 CC and a good healer.

You'll be fine, just remember to LOS nearly everything in there.

I've found it hard to tank MrT as well. Ferals seem pretty poorly suited for it in general, and the group composition is not nearly as forgiving. You need either strong CC or very strong DPS for success, because quite frankly without spell reflect or spell damage mitigation you will take too much damage.

My best experience has been to go with strong DPS that can take some hits and burst down the casters first. Killing the Physician (if it exists), then the Magisters/Warlocks seems to work best, followed by the blood knights. If there's an ethereal they need to be CCed or otherwise controlled. But even then...that was with all of us in T5 or greater, and it was still not ideal.

It's doable, but it's definitely not fun. The good news is that ferals largely own on the Priestess boss, so having a feral as a tank there is a big benefit. They're also very good against Kael since they can heal.

Heroic MrT is actually one of my favorite instances. You have to play smart for your group composition. You do need to CC mobs. Which mobs you CC first depends on your group. Fortunately nearly all CC works -- mind control is awesome. But with that said, as long as I have had a group who could CC competently, I've had no issues tanking it at the T5 gear level. I really like the pacing of it. First 2 bosses close together, after some warm up trash. The trash leading up to the second boss is amusing. The second boss requires figuring out the correct strategy for your group -- and barkskin+tranquility is awesome during the burn down phase so don't be afraid to do that even as tank. Third boss is a lot of fun. And then there is Kael.

I don't know if it's a few pages back in this thread or in another thread, but one of the things to really smooth out Heroic MrT is to be creative with pulling. Use Cyclone, Moonfire, even Hurricane to make sure that everything comes to you. You can abuse LoS on almost every pull to get the casters to you, and they're squishy enough that Swipe should hold them over the healers. I typically Cyclone the second dps target to start the pull, Moonfire the kill target as I run back. Cyclone gives you initial aggro on everything, which helps immensely. If you don't have a Rogue for sap, Hurricane for one tick works like a charm as well. Putting HoTs on yourself just before you pull will also help. Finally, be smart about the mob abilities, both in terms of CC and kill order. If your group positions itself so you chain Glaive Throw, it doesn't matter who's tanking, it's going to be a long run.

Crappy management of the mobs that can glaive throw is what has lead to a perception that druid's can't tank this. Also, if you have a MC'ing priest, you still need to make sure the glaive throw doesn't knock him out of MC.

Like droeber said, LoS in this instance is key. Make sure your group knows how to handle los too and you are golden.

I already have Rawr on my work comp, my wow comp, and my former bot box/backup/wowhead comp, I tinker with it enough if it were another sort of item I'd have gone blind by now. Rawr is the best, but for planning out upgrades that maintain longer lifespan (regem for cat/high threat/resist or the like) sometimes experienced bears are the place to go.

Yeah...I forgot that shred ticks every two seconds instead of three, that kinda makes a big difference there. And yeah actually I have horrible luck with ferocious bite critting as often as it should, thinks for all the answers, now I can jsut put that to rest and never bother with it again.

I've actually found feral druids to be the best tanks by far for heroic MrT. Paladins have a very hard time tanking only some things. Consecrate likes to interfere with CC and frankly unless you're sporting some very nice gear, one tank simply can't survive with 6 mobs beating on him so you need some cc either way. The fact that their only ranged pull has some seriously gimpy range makes LoSing things harder. Warriors, have the opposite problem, they can't tank enough mobs. I've done heroic MrT enough times to be double exalted on my hunter, and druid who was t4 feral or t6 resto with a t5/t6 feral druid tanking almost every run where I was healing.

In addition to the tips other people have mentioned, another way to use the fact that you're a druid, not just a cat/bear, to bring something other tanks can't, is that paladin/shaman healers have a much harder time healing kael than their hot possessing counterparts. Swap to a healing weapon and throw out some heals while you fly around in circles. It really trivializes the kael fight. Also, assuming you have decent threat, run out and feral charge some of the fire ball casts.

On that note: http://oldschoolwow.com/GCDHax.zip
(The warlocks in my guild were bugging me to make something like this after seeing that new 0 +dmg 14% haste S4 weapon.)

GCDHax provides you with two global Lua functions: GCDCheck() and GCDEquip("Name of Item"). These functions allow you to smartly equip items only after the GCD is used (so you don't waste a GCD). While changing idols or weapons does reset your swing timer, this is completely unnoticeable in caster (if used for healing idols) and barely noticeable in Cat form (although not beneficial in pure dps positions, but great for trash, farming, or pvp).

Usage:

/run GCDCheck()
/cast Mangle (Cat)()
/run GCDEquip("Idol of Terror")

/run GCDCheck()
/cast Shred
/run GCDEquip("Everbloom Idol")

/run GCDCheck()
/cast !Cat Form
/run GCDEquip("Staff of the Forest Lord")

/run GCDCheck()
/cast [target=target,harm,target=targettarget,help][] Lifebloom
/run GCDEquip("Idol of the Emerald Queen")

Edit: In v2, I'm gonna try checking Quartz's swing timer for doing "minimal-loss" swaps to see if would work in pure-dps situations.

Druids, to my knowledge at least, are the only tanks that can reliably *tank* the dangerous adds on the Priestess encounter.

On the other hand, Paladins can help heal there.

Warriors are just... well, stuck hamstringing I suppose.

Try using the Optimizer and give the available pieces a run. This gives you the best results. I was at the same point some weeks ago when we turned away from Vashj and Kael using the 2.4 possibilities. We went back and killed them and I got to wear 1T6 + 2T5 + 2T4 after the Vashj kill.

Good thing I double checked here, was about to ask the same question... I must have left some buffs off, because Tsokks was showing me that SSPoM (Scryer) was a good bit higher than even the Sunwell neck. Readjusting, its a bit lower. I was starting to store up Eye's for the move over from Aldor to Scryer =p. I'd make the change if it was better than the Sunwell neck but as is, it's pretty much only a 15 kitty point upgrade over the Aldor. Prob not worth the hours and hours of farming >.<

Yeah sorry about that, probably should have mentioned my current tanking helm is/was T4 with the 18stam meta and 18stam enchant. The lack of gems and enchants in my new T6 is kinda why I am here, I didn't want to socket with the wrong ones only to have to go back and do it over.

Thanks to everyone who put their 2cents in. It is greatly appreciated, keep up the good work this thread is always a pleasure to read.

I switched from feral to resto (for arenas only) last season... I used my 5k stockpiled arena points to get S3 gear, got the shoulders for the runspeed (because it WAS good ) and used pve gear in the other slots... By the time the brackets were spread out enough and I got good enough to play at this rating, I had nearly enough points saved... if you have better than Karazhan resto-gear, it would be even easier to do assuming you play with a partner that can keep double-DPS off you (hunter/lock/rogue > warrior for this)

I know I will buy feral gear first next season as it's such a minimal upgrade from S3 to S4 really...

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...skmuruloot.jpg

Ring:
308 armor, yeah!
48 stam, yeah!
32 defense, yeah!
22 expertise, yeah!
42 block value, ye....what?

It's still pretty good, but it would be much better with dodge rating or something.

I wonder if the tank trinket will have a similar group-style effect?

Group style effect?

The tank ring is a net tradeoff of a bit of stam and ~500 armor for some defense and a boatload of Expertise. Considering warriors are pretty much trying to get rid of expertise at this point and Armor doesn't benefit warriors as much as it does druids, I'm still trying to figure out what the ring is meant for. Yeah, it's definitely best in slot as it is, but it could have been so much better for one tank class or the other. :|